Tag: Presbytery Report

Presbytery members arrived up in Aberdeen on the Thursday and Friday with committees took up the whole of the first morning. Presbytery began properly began in the afternoon with singing Luther’s 46th A mighty fortress is our God before Professor Donald Macleod of the Free Church gave us two lectures.

The first being on Munus Triplex: Christ’s Threefold Office. He expounded how these functions correspond to our basic Spiritual needs. Our need for knowledge is met by Christ as Prophet, the need of forgiveness sis met by our great Priest and our need for deliverance and protection is found in Christ as King. He beautifully drew out how Christ fulfils this threefold office in his pre incarnate, humiliated and exalted states.

His second session was a masterful reflection on Gethsemanee from Mark 14. He was on familiar ground and if you’ve read Prof Macleod’s the Person of Christ you can get a flavour of some of the rich teaching we enjoyed. There were beautiful insights on the humanity of Christ. Both addresses should be on the website soon.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up in hearing church reports and prayer. Many of our congregations are looking at buildings and are establishing themselves. There’s nothing remarkable happening and yet slow and steady growth taking place. There are a large number of ruling elders being trained which is a source for great thanksgiving. Trinity Aberdeen provided a lovely meal and a few of us ended up at a hotel for a while

The Saturday morning began with worship, we sang a wonderful new hymn written by Andrew Randall on the Apostle’s Creed (pictured above), Gethin Jones who is spending the year with us in Ealing whilst under care. He preached from 1 John 2:12-17 which is not an easy passage but he had some excellent insights into the text. Gethin has been trained at Westminster and so you can see his training coming through in his preaching.

The presbytery business was quite light with a report of a successful visit frm the Home Office which looks at how we grant visas. It was a good thing to remove loan elders from Liss and what took probably the longest part of the morning was a motion to for a study committee on the growth of IPC abroad. Following a short break we had a report on the Church Planting Committee where Matthew Roberts presented the initial draft of our strategy regarding planting new churches. Candidates and Credentials who are very busy at the moment processing lots of elder applications also fed back to Presbytery.

The other two bits of news are that we elected David Gibson as the new moderator to start probably in December. Chris Cradock has done an excellent job for us these last couple of years and it’s encouraging that we now have a number of men who could easily do it which wasn’t always the case. We’ve also made a recommendation for Synod Moderator.

All in all a quiet presbytery but that is good. The new book of Liturgy has been published on Amazon and that will be a great help to us

Synod is the highest court of the IPC that meets annually, it is comprised of all the voting elders of the English Presbytery, the European Proto Presbytery, The Korean speaking Presbytery in England and the South Korean Presbytery, altogether there are 91 voting elders spread across the world!!

For the first time we met on the continent in the OM Zav Centre in Belgium. The morning was taken up with a lecture from Jose Sagovia on the Reformation in Europe. Jose encouraged us not to think of the Reformation as a finished project in which we just take books off the shelves and study what the Reformers said. He closed with 4 applications

1. We need to rediscover the human problem of sin and be willing to address it.

2. The roots of the Reformation were in Revelation

3. Our strength has become our weakness – to give testimony should be to speak about Christ and not our own experience. He had a lovely line about ‘we speak the truth realising we are part of the problem’ he then riffed on Martin Luther and Woody Allen

4. We must be more dependent on prayer

It was a real shame the address was not recorded, Jose is a great gift to the church he is fresh in his thinking and speaking.

The business part of Synod began in the afternoon and there was slight confusion over whether we were actually quorate. Initially we thought we weren’t but then somehow we were!! It’s going to be an ongoing issue for us as the South Korean Presbytery were only able to send one delegate of their 29 members. We debated it for quite a bit of the afternoon and I think it’s fair to say we’re not of one mind!!

We did decide to take church relations more seriously which I think that will be a good thing moving forward. The standing committee of Synod will take responsibility for this. I hope that will mean that we join the ICRC at some point in the future. It was a joy to have delegates from the GKV – Gereformeerde Kerken. in the Netherlands who were asked for their wisdom a few times. Reports were given from each of the Presbyteries……….

Korean speaking Presbytery in England – Puk Kyong Kim has retired as Moderator and thanks were expressed for his pioneer work over the years. There is a new church plant in New Malden.

English Presbytery – 2 new church plants – Brentford, Ilford, Leeds. A number of churches looking for buildings. An encouraging number of elders being trained across the denomination as well as the men under care of Presbytery. There have been discouragements too resignations and retirements to ill health this past year.

European Proto Presbytery – Welcomed a new church in Prague with 3 elders, aiming for 5 churches with a growing number of relationships with churches and church plants across the denomination. In December had a Presbytery retreat where wives were invited along and had sessions on the implications of Covenant Theology – it was a great time for deepening relationships.

Korean Presbytery – 5 churches and other churches exploring joining. There are around about 20 elders going through the process of Ordination.

Synod also approved the new book of liturgy that should be published in the next few months which is a very helpful document. Thanks were also given to Ranald Macauley who has written a history from his perspective over the early years of IPC. It’s a fascinating document and should be on the website shortly

We’ll next meet in the Kingston Korean Church next March.

The following day we were back for Presbytery which began with Ranald Macauley who is in his 61st year as a converted atheist preached movingly to us from Psalm 1 & 2. He began by recounting how in 1955 he had walked out of a church in South Africa muttering under his breath “I do not believe in the Father, I do not believe in the Son, I do not believe in the Holy Spirit” after a year of living in the horror of a natural universe he came to Christ in Cambridge. Ranald spoke of the joy of being discovered by the Psalter in these 61 years, pointing us to the juxtaposition of Psalm 1 & 2 the micro “blessed is the man” and macro “The nations”, how we are immediately projected into a situation of intense struggle and of an entire globe. It is the Word of God we must focus on. The laughing of God in Psalm 2 is the laughter of incredulity “you must be crazy”. The central issue today is that of a creator and creation on this we must be clear. It was warm hearted encouraging stuff.

The business part of Presbytery was brief and we dealt with church reports, Finance committee, Church Planting, Candidates and Credentials. It was a joy to welcome Peter Leach who has come ‘under care’ with a view to entering the ministry. He has been working in Trinity, York for a year and will do another one before moving on to the next stage of training. We now have 8 men under care which is the most we’ve ever had……

We had a discussion on how we move forward on the Synod question with various ideas proposed, we probably generated more heat than light and it may well be we just need to be patient. We’ve experienced growth over the last number of years and that brings its own issues.

Presbytery was held at Christ Church, Derby (CCD). The congregation have joined us in the last 3 years and have been a huge encouragement. Jonty Rhodes was the Church Planter and, 5 years on from the beginning of the work, he is leaving early in 2017 to head to Leeds to plant Christ Church Central. Joel Kendall was recently ordained and installed as the new minister in CCD. The church purchased a new building last year and this is the second time they’ve hosted Presbytery. The meetings began properly with worship on Friday afternoon. We sang Frank Houghton’s hymn ‘ Facing a Task Unfinished’. Frank Houghton was a well known OMF Missionary and, accompanying us on the piano was his grandson Tim, an elder at CCD. Andrew Randall who is the minister in Grace, Larbert preached very helpfully from 2 Timothy 4 on epitaphs – Demas – ‘In love with this world’, Mark – ‘Useful for ministry’, Alexander – ‘Did me great harm’ and Paul – ‘Strong in the Lord’.

The business began with reports from the different churches and then we dealt with lots of the admin things regarding Presbytery, Data Protection Policy, Reports from Trips to the US, Visa Sponsorship, Delegates to the European photo Presbytery. The Candidates and Credentials Committee reported back. We managed to get it done ahead of time and then different folk went off to places to eat and to the homes of people from Christ Church Derby.

Saturday morning started with the first of Jonny Gibson’s sermons from 2 Peter 3. He gave the big theme as ‘Ethics by Eschatology’ – how do we live now in the light of then? The first talk was from 2 Peter 3:1-10 – ‘Unembarrassed Supernaturalism – Recovering our eschatology’ – There were lots of great insights into the text. I liked the point about us often being told to avoid certain places in scripture in our evangelism – don’t open the can of worms. Peter on the other hand proclaimed angels, creation, the flood and Sodom and Gomorrah. In dealing with the scoffers question ‘Where is the promise of his coming?’ Jonny’s first point was ‘Remember God’s powerful word in Creation and the Flood’ and secondly, in dealing with the Question of the Scoffers – Gods timing is not our timing. God isn’t being slow he is being patient; Christ’s coming will be surprising and exposing. The second talk, 2 Peter 3:11-18 gave us 4 points on living in the present in the light of the future:

1. In light of the coming judgement live holy and godly lives v11,12.

2. In the light of the coming renewal live pure and ‘at peace’ lives, v12,13 – Jonny had a beautiful illustration of going into the sun. We feel it’s heat and light at the same time. In the same way we receive justification and sanctification – Christ for sin and Christ died to sin.

3. In the light of coming judgement and renewal, be patient.

4. In the light of Bible twisters, guard and grow.

Both sessions were very helpful. It’s so encouraging to have good, solid teaching at Presbytery. It means that when people ask you ‘How did Presbytery go?’, the first thing you talk about is what you learnt and the Scriptures. Jonny heads to Westminster Seminary on Thursday. We will miss him hugely at Presbytery but he plans to stay part of IPC.

The Church Planting Committee gave their report. We accepted the resignation of Michael Davis from Christ Church Culcheth and so there’s much need for prayer there. Presbytery appointed a Commission to work with Kyle of Lochalsh (for those who don’t know the difference a Commission can act with the power of Presbytery whilst a committee must report back to Presbytery). We were all finished by lunchtime on Saturday. We’re due to meet next in Belgium with the Europeans and Koreans for Synod on March 3/4 2017.